AUG 28, 2025
Dear Reader,
I DNF’d a book this week. Have you ever done that? It feels wrong. There was a time when I would have continued to the end through sheer determination and spite, just so I could put it on the “read” list and rant about it. I’m a firm believer in not giving a review dissing a book that I haven’t actually read to the end.
Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of romance books lately are carbon copies? Not the exact, copy/paste digital kind but the old fashioned, get your fingers dirty with that smelly, waxy, pigment kind. Do you remember that? Do you remember slipping that carbon paper (hence the name carbon copy) in between two regular pieces of paper and then putting it into the typewriter and…
Wait. Wow, am I dating myself right now or what?
ANYwho, the point is that the copy was never, EVER as sharp as the original. Every step away from the original got blurrier and dirtier until it was hard to read and your fingers were black and you had a headache from the fumes.
Actually that might have been mimeographs.
At any rate, the point is that I started a book this week that should have hit me in all my happy places. It was paranormal/contemporary romance. Witch meets shapeshifter, sparks fly. Heh, literally.
It wasn’t badly written. Actually there was nothing technically wrong with it that I can point to. But…
I was bored.
And I found myself wondering why. I’ve read worse written books. I’ve read books with questionable grammar and repetitive plot holes and ludicrous Duex Ex Convenience. I’ve read books I thought were so vile I wanted to throw them at the wall. I didn’t, because I’m usually reading on my phone and I love my phone, so I maliciously deleted the book from my device with a decisive click and condemnation.
After I’d read it.
This one? I couldn’t force myself to continue. It was…meh. Not upsetting. Not wrong. Just…meh.
After much discussion with Ms. Edwina I think we’ve figured out why I don’t want to finish. It was a carbon copy of every contemporary romance on those tables in Barnes and Noble right now. It looks right. Sounds right. But isn’t…new.
The characters aren’t characters. They’re every romance character combined into one homogenous, generic, idea of a character. The man is [insert alpha wolf shifter here] and the woman is [insert witch here]. The grandma is [insert feisty older woman} and the best friend is [insert best friend].
It felt very paint by numbers. It was Billionaire Contemporary Romance, but make the boys wolves and the girls witches.
There wasn’t any kind of twist on that. It wasn’t boy who can shift to wolf but only when he’s in a one mile radius of a duck, or girl who’s a witch but can only do magic when the moon is full and it’s raining.
I don’t know about you, but there’s so many books out there that need to be read that it seems wrong to continue being bored, and it also seems wrong to put it down and move on.
I walked away from it, but I also added it to my “DNF” page in my journal, so at least it’s on a list somewhere?
Until next time,
**Book News**
GaG — Current Word Count: 64,452. That’s definitely a ball park. There’s some cut words in that count that haven’t actually been cut because when you measure your daily word count you’re loathe to hit delete on anything. I’ll clean it out this weekend and start fresh so expect that number to go down a bit.
Chapter Five: Nobody Expects An Inquisition
Favorite Line of the Week: (From Chapter Five)
“It takes a lot of effort to look that effortless.”
Once again I’ve pulled all of the crafting supplies out from their hiding places so that I can work on September’s journal pages and haven’t put them away. I’m now trying to write while up to my elbows in washi tape and stickers. By the time I put them away it’ll be time to get them back out. This is why every house should have a craft room with a door.